This article was initially published in the NPMP Magazine Issue 2. You can read all the articles and the full magazine here. To order your physical copy please email npolicemonitor@gmail.com.
by Anonymous
Ever since being subjected to an armed police raid on my home, my thoughts kept going back to a single question: where is the duty of care for young people in these situations? Has there not been any prior investigation of minors in the home? Why isn’t there an appropriate adult on the scene to ensure that the mental health of that innocent young person isn’t permanently damaged?
At approximately 2 am in the morning I was awoken by shouting, banging, and a torch light being shone through my upstairs bedroom window. I initially thought I was dreaming, but on realising this was real and hearing shouts of “armed police,” I ran down the stairs and opened the door to a gun being aimed at my forehead. I was ordered to step outside slowly with my hands in front of me, only wearing pyjamas with no shoes or socks on a freezing winter night.
There was lots of shouting and aggression, “Is anyone else in the house?” Thankfully neither my son who they had come for, nor my youngest child were present. “We’re sending the dog in so you need to tell us, or they will be attacked by the dog”. I repeated that no one else was there and was led down the path, and about two houses away, still with a gun pointed at my head, I was told to put my hands on the wall. I started shaking with a combination of fear and cold. I looked around and the road had been blocked off by police cars at each end; innocent pedestrians and motorists were being screamed at to go the other way.
It’s funny the random things you think of in a situation like this: I wondered why someone was out walking their dog at this time of the morning, she looked petrified being screamed at in such an aggressive way. Then I began to think of things I was grateful for, at least neither of my children were at home, and at least it was a Friday, so I didn’t have to get up for work in the morning. I think I was able to remain so calm because I only had to deal with my own emotions. I know it would have played out very differently if I had to consider the trauma of my children, especially my 10-year-old. There is no way I would have walked away from my house and allowed my youngest child to be woken up to a gun in their face and all the shouting. What would have happened in that scenario? I felt I had a lot to be grateful for in that moment. I eventually asked the officer if I could cross my arms as I was really shaking by this point and felt very exposed. He looked me up and down and said, “yes you don’t look like you’ve got anything on you.” Another officer eventually brought me some shoes that were on the stairs.
After they had been around the house with the dog, they let me back in. Two plain clothes Xcalibre Officers came in, a male and female. I asked whether I could use the toilet, she laughed and said, “yes, but don’t be pulling any guns out.” I didn’t even honour that comment with a response. I was told I needed to leave my home as it was now a crime scene, and no one was available to do a search until between 7 am and 9 am the next morning. Fortunately, my friend answered the phone when I rang – by this time it must have been close to 3 am. The officer waited outside my bedroom door while I got dressed and then I had to leave. I felt humiliated and thought about how unnecessarily loud they were; my whole street must have been awake. My next-door neighbour told me the following day that there were twenty-two armed officers. She had counted them through the window, even though they had also screamed at her and her daughter to move back. Clearly, they thought my son was going to come out shooting everyone in sight, even though he has never been convicted of a firearms offence in the past.
Since this traumatic event, I refer back to my original questions, what guidelines do armed police have for minors in the home? Why is no one there to put the needs of children at the forefront of all of this? As an adult now, I feel a lot of anxiety: I always leave my key in the door now in case I ever need to open it quickly again. What impact would this have had on my child? What impact has it already had on the many young people who must have been subjected to this inhumane treatment? When will these questions be answered?
This article was initially published in the NPMP Magazine Issue 2. You can read all the articles and the full magazine here. To order your physical copy please email npolicemonitor@gmail.com.
This article was initially published in the NPMP Magazine Issue 2. You can read all the articles and the full magazine here. To order your physical copy please email npolicemonitor@gmail.com.
by Laura Loyola-Hernández (Stop the Scandal)
Over the past couple of weeks, an unprecedented number of protests have erupted in the UK in support of Black Lives Matter following the murder of George Floyd in the Unites States. On June 27th, on the one year anniversary of Shukri Abdi’s death, a Black Muslim refugee girl, a protest was organised in her name. Hundreds of people chanting “No Justice, No Peace” and “Justice for Shukri” inundated the streets. Shukri’s tragic death signals wider issues around systemic failures by schools, the police and the UK government’s treatment of migrants, in particular Black people with precarious immigration status.
The hostile environment, a set of government policies first implemented by then Home Secretary Theresa May, has been in place since 2012 to make life so difficult in the UK that migrants would want to voluntarily leave the country. Banks, schools, landlords, doctors, nurses and universities all became border agents. The hostile environment has leaned heavily on the use of technology as a surveillance mechanism and the police as an active operating arm of it. A pilot program to use a biometric fingerprint scanning device and app connected to the Home Office immigration database by police was launched in West Yorkshire in February 2018 (now used nationwide): anyone suspected of committing a crime and lying about their identity can be stopped in the street, have their fingerprint scanned by police on the spot, and have their details searched in both the Police and Immigration databases. Given that anyone with an immigrant status (someone on a visa, with Indefinite Leave to Remain, asylum seekers, refugees or precarious migrant status) will have their fingerprints stored in the Home Office immigration database, a potential traffic stop could end with someone being detained by Immigration Enforcement, maybe unlawfully due to an unreliable Home Office database. From our #STOPtheSCANdal campaign’s Freedom of Information request, we know that Black and Brown communities are disproportionately targeted by these searches. Liberty has warned that these technologies can deter survivors of domestic abuse in coming forward as their immigration data can be shared with the Home Office. This is particularly concerning given the astronomicalincrease in the number of domestic abuse cases since the COVID-19 lockdown. This is not the only consequence that COVID-19 has had on migrant communities in the UK.
The police use of Motorola’s PRONTO software (Police Reporting and Notebook Organiser, PRONTO), which includes the biometric fingerprint app, has been updated with COVID-19 penalty functions introduced among the new emergency police powers granted by the Coronavirus Bill in March. This new development will compound the unequal impact of the pandemic with the discrimination and lack of accountability embedded in policing technologies. Big Brother Watch’s research, which examined fines given in England under the Coronavirus Bill, found that Asian people received at least 13% of penalty fines even though they represent 7.8% of the national population, and Black people were issued 5% of fines despite being 3.5% of England’s population.
The impact of COVID-19 has already been devastating on Black, Brown and migrant communities. The COVID-19 report released by Public Health England in June demonstrates that, in comparison to white people, ‘BME’ people (to use the report’s terminology) are more likely to die from the virus. Black people specifically are 4 times more likely to do so than the average for all ethnic groups. This percentage increases for people born outside of England. The report found that, in comparison to the all group average), people from Central and West Africa are 4.5 times more likely to die of COVID-19 while in this country. A joint report by migrant organisations and campaigns found that the hostile environment is having a devastating impact on migrants’ access to healthcare during the COVID-19 crisis. The report concluded that 57% of respondents were actively avoiding seeking medical advice because of fear of being charged, their data being shared with the Home Office, and other immigration enforcement issues. Those with precarious migrant status, often in frontline jobs, have No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) which means they are unable to access universal credit. Migrants are being forced to work despite having COVID-19 symptoms out of fear of becoming destitute or being threatened at work. During a pandemic we are only as safe as the most vulnerable in our society. Nobody should be forced to put their life at risk during a pandemic out of fear of immigration enforcement, and the police should not be working to make it harder for migrants to stay safe. These fears will only increase under the use of Schedule 21 of the Coronavirus Act, where police and immigration officers are now given the power to stop and hold anyone suspected of having the virus for 3 to 48 hours.
Many who took to the streets on June 27th in the name of Shukri Abdi put their own immigration status in jeopardy by breaking lockdown rules. It is important to remember migrants do not have the same rights when stopped by police. But until there is no more need to protest social inequalities in the streets we will continue to scream and give voice for those that can no longer chant:
No Justice, No Peace. Justice for Shukri. Abolish Hostile Environment. Defund the Police.
This article was initially published in the NPMP Magazine Issue 2. You can read all the articles and the full magazine here. To order your physical copy please email npolicemonitor@gmail.com.
This article was initially published in the NPMP Magazine Issue 2. You can read all the articles and the full magazine here. To order your physical copy please email npolicemonitor@gmail.com.
by Remi Joseph-Salisbury (NPMP)
There should be no doubt that Boris Johnson’s election victory was a monumental blow for the anti-racist left. As state-driven racisms deepen, we need to pay attention to the challenges facing communities of colour. The Tories vowed to be the party of ‘law and order’, and we should expect increasingly authoritarian and punitive forms of social control – including ramping up the presence of police in UK schools.
The past few years have seen calls to significantly increase the number of police officers working in schools. Among the high-profile advocates are the children’s commissioner, the head of the Metropolitan Police and a Home Affairs Select Committee on serious youth violence. While there appears to be relative (and rare) political consensus on the ‘merits’ of this intervention, these plans should really be a cause for concern.
Rather than making schools safer, a police presence risks irreparable damage to our learning environments. In my research on racism in schools, secondary school teachers expressed serious concerns about the detrimental impact. Teachers described the efforts they go to in making their schools a comfortable and safe space for their students.
As one teacher from a racially diverse school in Greater Manchester explained, even though students might ‘see school as crap at the time, they see it as a safe space’. The presence of police in schools, he warned, risks disrupting this sense of safety. Particularly for students from already over-policed communities, schools-based police officers threaten to turn schools into an environment of fear, suspicion and alienation.
We know that black and Asian young people are more likely to be subject to policing practices such as stop and search. They are also more likely to be subject to school disciplinary procedures, including exclusions. It is not a leap, therefore, to suggest that students of colour are more likely to be subject to police attention in schools. Evidence from the US certainly suggests this is the case. As the American Civil Liberties Union has warned, a police presence risks turning minor incidents into criminal issues, with potentially devastating consequences.
Perhaps most troubling are the ties between schools-based police officers and the prison-industrial complex – the ever-expanding network of profiteering that governs the expansion and privatisation of prisons. The presence of police in schools facilitates the early filtering of young people towards prison.
US activists have drawn attention to this issue, with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People warning in 2005 that ‘the punitive and overzealous tools and approaches of the modern criminal justice system have seeped into our schools, serving to remove children from mainstream educational environments and funnel them onto a one-way path toward prison’.This warning should resonate here. Not only does the UK incarcerate an even higher proportion of its black population than the US, according to a 2017 review by David Lammy for the justice ministry, but it also has the second-highest proportion of its prisoners in private prisons (after Australia), at 20 per cent.
With the government committed to increasing police powers, expanding prisons and placing more police in schools, we need to pay urgent attention to the pipeline feeding young people of colour into the expanding prison system.
The long histories of institutional racism in both policing and schooling indicate that schools-based police officers are likely to intensify the racisms facing students of colour.
It is important that we oppose these plans and call for our schools to be free from the presence of police officers.
This article was originally published in Red Pepper Magazine
This article was initially published in the NPMP Magazine Issue 2. You can read all the articles and the full magazine here. To order your physical copy please email npolicemonitor@gmail.com.
by Roxy Legane (NPMP and Kids of Colour)
Nobody ‘deserves’ to be tasered. However, responses to a recent video of a Black man being tasered in Greater Manchester, in front of his young son, show that many believe otherwise. What became clear following the incident on Wednesday 6th May is how progress remains bound by a society that relishes in physical and emotional punishment for ‘crime’. The racist and classist attitudes of the police force are well documented, but what becomes shocking is the reminder that sections of the public accept that someone’s actions could warrant violence, without consideration for whether this will produce a better society. What follows as a result is the police force’s ability to weaponise such acceptance, consciously choosing to exploit the public’s support for physical and emotional harm to over-police and use violence without scrutiny.
Public acceptance of the notion that some people deserve to be subject to state violence is the force’s most meaningful ally. Following the incident involving the man and child in Manchester, Greater Manchester Police were quick to release a list of the man’s charges (concerningly, including his full name and address). His ‘deserved it’ list. It then evoked its expected reaction on social media, acting as a ledger of justification for the use of a potentially fatal weapon, which was used seemingly without warning; in close proximity to a child; and at a petrol station, an environment in which such weapons are a greater risk.
That ‘deserved it’ list is typical police protocol. Today and historically, it works perfectly to help the institution avoid accountability because we live in a country that largely stands by the idea that if the police can ‘justify’ it, it is acceptable, and any misdemeanour gives the police power to do what they want.
When Northern Police Monitoring Project led an event in Moss Side in 2019 on deaths after police contact, there were clear similarities between each speaker’s story, and one specific similarity was key. From Lisa Cole, Janet Alder, Gail Grainger and Germaine Phillips, we heard the same message and the same warning to others: If this happens to you, the police will take the narrative out of your hands almost immediately.
That ‘deserved it’ list will be released to the media almost instantly. They will begin to defame the character of your loved one, to ensure that before you have your chance to speak of the intimate moments you shared, the kindness they had, the things they enjoyed, the public will know them as someone else. The person the public will come to know will be someone you never did: a dehumanised construction, underpinned by ideas of criminality, and no doubt by their race and class. To this day, many will still argue Mark Duggan ‘deserved it’ because of who he was presented to be.
But the ‘if this happens to you’ warnings often land on deaf ears. What is interesting about the way these incidences and following constructions work is the ability for people to remove themselves from any proximity to behaviours shared on the ‘deserved it’ list. Reading through the list of charges shared by GMP regarding the man they tasered, how could people be so certain that this would never be someone they knew? While recognising the risk here in being seen to ‘condone’ certain behaviours, the purpose is to be realistic and eradicate the idea of a flawless majority.
Some public reactions to the list could lead you to believe that every other citizen in the UK has never known someone to have ‘one more pint’ before driving, to do 46mph in a 40mph zone, to not have car insurance, or to leave their home unnecessarily during COVID-19. As videos emerge online of people coming together to conga line in celebration of VE day, clearly breaking social distancing rules, you wonder how many of these individuals would say ‘well he should not have been travelling’. As for those shouting ‘but he resisted’, how many times must Black people, people of colour and campaigners against police violence justify the fear and anger – a product of over-policing – that leads to said ‘resistance’?
The inability of many to see themselves or those they know in a similar scenario is of course significantly aided by race and privilege. In many ways, the ‘deserved it’ list is just bonus validation to justify police action, because for so many, the ability to see this man was Black was enough to wake the racism settled in so many of us (people of colour included) that affirms a base view of ‘he deserved whatever followed’.
A base view supported by a society, with help from its media and politicians, that labels Black men as inherently ‘risky’, consequently framing your reaction to them. Race and class are strong groundings for the ‘deserved it’ list that the police are quick to reveal, they are companions that truly validate one another to construct the notion that this man was ‘taser-worthy’. The police emerge unscathed.
Surrounding this case, the unforgiving rhetoric of sections of the public was a stark reminder of the critical groundwork that needs to be done to shift opinion on ‘crime and punishment’, if we are to make progress. It feels, at times, that those who stand firmly by the belief that no one deserves to be tasered, are a much smaller group of advocates.
That those who want accountability for the fact that a taser is 8 times more likely to be used against a Black person than a White person are fighting an uphill struggle. Those standing on that side will always be vindicated for stating that what an individual has done is, in many ways, unimportant. It is separate to our anger which stems from living in a state in which “wrong-doing” legitimates police violence, where the police are near immune from public criticism, and that the police are armed with weapons that can kill. A state in which the police force is institutionally racist, a key factor in deciding who is framed as more ‘deserving’ of harm.
This article was originally published in Ceasefire Magazine.
Not long since videos of a Sikh schoolboy being bullied went viral, the inquest of Shukri Abdi drew to an end today. Playground racism is still not taken seriously, despite its tragic consequences. Whether from more recent cases, or those as far back as Ahmed Iqbal Ullah, it is clear that lessons have not been learnt.
The way Shukri Abdi’s case played out highlights the clear inequality and bias present in the current system. Shukri’s family were denied interpreters at the police station and her mother, Zamzam Ture, has accused the police of institutional racism in their handling of her daughter’s death.
Over the summer, Shukri’s name rang out in cities across the globe. As heightened awareness shone a light on the failings of the criminal justice system, we saw many of those failings reflected in how the police investigated Shukri’s death and treated her family.
We send our love and solidarity to Shukri’s family, all families impacted by violence and racism and to all those pursuing justice. No justice, no peace.
This article was initially published in the NPMP Magazine Issue 2. You can read all the articles and the full magazine here. To order your physical copy please email npolicemonitor@gmail.com.
bySisters Uncut, MCR
During the pandemic, we have all felt trapped inside our homes. But for survivors of domestic and sexual abuse, this prospect is horrifying. For many, staying indoors means confinement with those who harm them. A survey by Women’s Aid reported that 67% of survivors currently experiencing domestic abuse say it has worsened since Covid-19 reached the UK and 72% say their abuser now has more control over their life. Refuge, the UK’s largest domestic violence charity, reported a 700% increase in referrals in a single day. Local specialist services have reported that women are waiting longer to reach out for help—resulting in high-risk situations with dire consequences. These statistics are unlikely to even scratch the surface.
Meanwhile, a new Domestic Abuse Bill is finally in the ‘report’ stage. This step precedes the third and final reading in the House of Commons. And Sisters Uncut Manchester have been asking the question: does this Bill go far enough to protect survivors?
We are the Manchester branch of Sisters Uncut: a direct-action feminist group founded in 2014 in response to the murderous cuts in funding for domestic abuse services. As intersectional feminists, we understand that an individual’s experience of violence is affected by interconnecting and mutually reinforcing systems of oppression. Domestic and sexual violence does not exist in a vacuum. The systems of power and privilege in our society enable and protect the actions of perpetrators.
The new Bill’s broader definition of domestic abuse encompasses physical, sexual, emotional and economic abuse. This can be celebrated as a helpful start point for educating our communities. It hands local authorities more responsibility in supporting survivors but no hard promises for long-term funding. Early drafts of the bill offered little to no support for migrant communities but we are pleased to see that, thanks to the advocacy of survivors groups nationwide, we can expect changes to the Immigration Acts which give survivors some recourse to public funds. The Secretary of State must now ensure the personal data of migrant survivors will not be used for immigration control purposes.
Of course, new protections are celebrated but we are profoundly concerned that the cornerstone of the new Domestic Abuse Bill is that of increasing police powers. Creating more criminal offenses cannot be the primary way in which we deal with domestic violence. The Bill builds upon a framework that requires individuals to approach the police for safety. To ask this, particularly from those communities that are consistently and aggressively over-policed, has not and does not work. The police are notoriously ineffective in dealing with domestic violence. They have none of the specialist knowledge, skills or trust required to positively transform communities or adequately support survivors. Survivors who are marginalised, including people of colour, migrant communities and the LGBTQ+ community, often have good reason to fear and distrust the police. Handing additional weapons to a police force which terrorises these communities routinely, in the name of safety for survivors, is not only unhelpful but dangerous.
Lasting support and safety for survivors cannot be found within the criminal justice system. Writer and organiser Lola Olufemi writes that “the most pressing issues for survivors is not that their abusers go to prison, but that there is a safety net for them to fall back on that enables them to leave abusive situations.” Justice for survivors goes well beyond a carceral solution. We must move the emphasis from the expansion of police power to ring-fenced funding for specialist frontline community services.
There are organisations across the country that, unlike the police, have expert and specialist knowledge of domestic abuse, and are dedicated to supporting survivors within their communities. They have been starved of funds after a decade of Conservative-driven implemented austerity. A Manchester specialist service provider told us this week that, “they’re making us work in darkness. We can’t put things in place that ensure trust and availability to service users [without long-term funding].” The money that is available for these services is being auctioned off to the lowest bidder, often going to a de-specialised service provider with less experience. Properly funding these vital organisations will save lives.
We demand a long-term funding plan for specialist services that meets the needs of all survivors. To those in power, our message is this: your cuts are violent, your cuts are dangerous, and you think that you can get away with them because you have targeted people who you perceive as powerless.
We are those people. We are Sisters Uncut. We will not be silenced.
* We use the term ‘survivor’ when referring to those who have experienced or are experiencing violence and abuse, but we know that this language isn’t perfect. We recognise the resourcefulness and resistance of those living with the impacts of violence whether in the present or the past. We acknowledge that not everyone who experiences or has experienced abuse defines themselves as a ‘survivor’, and that society may determine who is allowed to identify as one. We also recognise that not everyone does survive domestic, sexual, gendered, and/or state violence; we remember those who haven’t in our fight.
This article was initially published in the NPMP Magazine Issue 2. You can read all the articles and the full magazine here. To order your physical copy please email npolicemonitor@gmail.com.
This article was initially published in the NPMP Magazine Issue 2. You can read all the articles and the full magazine here. To order your physical copy please email npolicemonitor@gmail.com.
by Trans State Watch, UK
Trans State Watch UK is a trans-led organisation looking to monitor state violence against trans, nonbinary, intersex and/or gender nonconforming people, collecting, organising, and analysing data based on individual submissions in order to create a clearer picture of the nature of such violence in the United Kingdom. The organisation was formed in response to a lack of formal recognition of, and response to, the specific ways in which state violence operates to oppress trans and gender nonconforming people, through policing and healthcare to name a few.
We felt that it was necessary for such violence to be recorded since transness and gender nonconformity are one of the many ways in which a person can be significantly more vulnerable to the power of the state; in interactions with the police, when trans people are often violated and misgendered; in attempts to access healthcare, which encompasses not only access to gender-affirming hormones and/or surgery but also day-to-day medical needs; in mental health services, where transness is pathologised and belittled, often treated as a symptom or even a manifestation of other mental health problems, preventing a trans person both from having their gender treated with dignity and from receiving the help that they need. The given examples are just a small selection of the many ways in which state violence works to attack both trans and gender-nonconforming individuals, and the very fact of transness and gender nonconformity as a whole.
As far as we are able, we take an approach to understanding transphobic state violence in relation to other vectors of oppression; a person’s race, gender, class, disability, etc. may play as significant a role in shaping their interaction with the state as their transness will, and we aim to account for these as far as we are able to in our work. We do not demand that people disclose any of these factors as we prioritise the safety of those who submit their experiences to us and trust the individual to determine whether or not such a disclosure is worthwhile.
At the same time, one of the aims of the project is to understand not only the fact that transness is related to other vectors of oppression, but the nature of those relationships in the UK context – what forms of state violence are different trans people impacted by, and what are the factors that shape that? It is only when we understand this kind of nuance to transphobic state violence, textured by a variety of power structures and other social factors, that we can begin to address it.
Our policy for data collection is that people can disclose as much or as little information as they prefer, at their own discretion, in order to preserve the individual’s right to anonymity and security. We use the information that we collect to consolidate a firmer understanding of how and why transphobic state violence takes place in the UK, ultimately in order to be better able to combat it.
We can be found at @TSW_UK on Twitter and Trans State Watch UK on Facebook, and contacted at transstatewatch@protonmail.com. If you are interested in volunteering with us, our policy is that we are run exclusively by trans people.
This article was initially published in the NPMP Magazine Issue 2. You can read all the articles and the full magazine here. To order your physical copy please email npolicemonitor@gmail.com.
A new Stories of Injustice report authored by Becky Clarke and Kathryn Chadwick for JENGbA (Joint Enterprise Not Guilty By Association) finds that at least 109 women have been sentenced to long prison terms on joint enterprise convictions.
“The experiences of the 109 women examined in our report paint a harrowing picture of injustice which is currently sanctioned by our legal system. We would argue that these women are wrongfully convicted, and that charging them for violent crimes they did not commit is neither in the public interest, or delivering justice to victims and communities.”
Becky Clarke
Prosecutors rely on racist, classist and gendered narratives to secure convictions, the report finds. Additionally, in almost one half of cases there had been repeated failures, by the police and other agencies, to protect the women from violence as children and adults, or to respond to their health or care needs.
The report calls for a moratorium on the use of joint enterprise and secondary liability with women, and increased transparency and accountability in the decisions to use secondary liability by the Police and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in cases involving female defendants in multi-offender cases.
The authors call for the evidence on the use of joint enterprise with women defendants to be scrutinised by a Parliamentary Committee with appropriate jurisdiction, alongside a ‘People’s Panel’ of relevant experts and interested parties. Existing barriers to legal appeals for those women currently in prison, where there is a very real possibility of a miscarriage of justice, also need to be removed.
Read the report here, and find out more about JENGbA here.
This article was initially published in the NPMP Magazine Issue 2. You can read all the articles and the full magazine here. To order your physical copy please email npolicemonitor@gmail.com.
by Sibia Akhtar (Resistance Lab)
Both the policing and prison system offer systematic issues for ethnic minorities in Britain. The issues of policing are often underlaid with the issues within the prison system. Disparities in the treatment of ethnic minorities are prevalent in both systems of oppression as the policing disparities continue in prison. We need to identify the systematic similarities within the policing practices and prison life whereby there is a lack of concern for the treatment of ethnic minorities by the officers and the inmates. This is evident when we consider how decisions made by senior officers in 2000 resulted in the unjust killing of Zahid Mubarek at Feltham Youth Detention centre, London.
Zahid Mubarek was a 19-year-old British Pakistani Muslim, in prison for a first-time offence. He was given a 90-day prison sentence for stealing razors. Mubarek was involved in petty crimes and had run-ins with police officers. His serving of 90 days for stealing a packet of razors for his first offence shows how non-white individuals are given harsher sentences for petty crimes than their white counterparts. When he was just hours from being released from prison, his cellmate, Robert Stewart, hit him with a broken table leg 11 times.[1] Mubarek was taken to hospital but died from his injuries. Mubarek’s murder highlighted the failure of the British criminal justice system from his arrest to his death, thus demonstrating the continuation of injustice from policing to prison. His murder was racially motivated, but the prison system failed to keep Mubarek, a British-Pakistani, safe in prison. He was failed by the police, prison and justice for Mubarek was not immediately served.
In this issue of policing and prison, the question is: why was Mubarek in the same cell as Stewart, who was known to be violent months before he committed a murder? He had spoken about committing his first murder and this was known by some of the prison officers at Feltham. Stewart was openly racist and had a violent past and was suffering from mental health issues. This should have been an indication to the prison guards that Stewart should not be allowed to share a cell with any of the inmates. This was predominantly the reason as to why an inquiry needed to be launched to investigate prison officers’ attitudes to their non-white inmates.
Mubarek was born in 1980, a time where race relations were characterised by white vigilantes’ physical violence towards ethnic minorities in Britain. However, this period also demonstrated a Civil Rights movement in Britain where those of African, Caribbean and South Asian descent mobilised to tackle the racism enacted towards them. Physical violence was evident on the streets but the idea that those in the youth detention centre should have been protected by the racist abuse too just shows how ‘BAME’ communities are perceived as being unBritish. Racism to ethnic minorities had been exacerbated by the politics of those in power and the racial attitudes towards these communities were under threat by racists.[2] The racialized politics in Britain meant that forms of resistance were needed to defeat the racial abuse. The police were unsupportive of these communities who were being attacked and the freedom of speech rules applied. Particularly to the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities, the act of ‘Paki bashing’ became prominent in certain cities with large South Asians communities. The physical racism was much more apparent in this period as hostility to South Asian communities remained prominent. South Asian boys were overpoliced and targeted by the police officers, and at the same time they were suffering as victims from racist violence. ‘Race Riots’ were prominent in cities like Bradford, London and Manchester. South Asian boys particularly defended their communities as they knew that the police would not take the abuse seriously by police officials and the Criminal Justice System.
Before Mubarek’s death, he met with his father a few times and told him about his cellmate Stewart and that he was behaving strangely to which his father responded that Mubarek should stay out of his way and should not let anything get in the way of his release. Mubarek followed his father’s requests but his father did not know that Stewart was a known racist. Mubarek had even notified the prison officers that he wanted to change cells and the prison guards failed to respond promptly to Mubarek’s call. However, the positioning of Mubarek to share a cell with Stewart was not a minor institutional error but a fatal one.
The racialised policing of prison guards was demonstrated when Mubarek was placed in a cell with a known racist who was suffering from mental health issues. This shows how there is a disregard for these issues which have not been tackled properly or considered. It is a fatal situation and the points made in the inquiry must be considered to prevent further disproportionate deaths in the prison service.[3] The inquiry followed after constant pressure from the victim’s family to have his death investigated, and this is also another consideration as to why families have to constantly battle to have these inquiries take place.
By 2008, the family of Mubarek were able to launch an inquiry into the murder of their son.[4] This was seen as a victory for the family and those involved in the case, but it took so long and required continuous pressure from the family, MPs such as David Blunkett and community activists to push for the inquiry to take place. The inquiry found that his death was preventable.[5] Also, the inquiry demonstrated that the prison officers showed little concern about Stewart, known for racism and harassment, but also as someone suffering from mental health issues, sharing a cell with anyone let alone a Pakistani boy.
As news articles from the time showed, police officers refused to follow up on the inquest into Mubarek’s death and the similarities with the death of Stephen Lawrence, particularly there were parallels between the policing and covering up of unjust deaths of ‘BAME’ individuals and the institutionalised racism within the prison.[6] A report was needed to show that the police service was to blame for the death and appropriate consideration of Mubarek’s self. In the report, the police officers knew of Stewart’s racist history, his ongoing letters depicting racial violence, but also that Mubarek asked numerous times that he wanted to be moved away from his cellmate.[7]
The Mubarek inquiry (2014) also found that prison officers were unlikely to check on the wellbeing of the prisoners, particularly those who are vulnerable. But it also highlighted that many officers were not equipped to see these issues taking place in the cell. Here arises the problem of cell sharing, and the dangers associated with this. The practice of cell sharing highlighted that it needs to be removed to prevent these deaths from taking place in the future, and the training of prison officers needs to be improved to protect the ‘BAME’ individuals. Especially because Mubarek did reach out to the prison officers about Stewart multiple times, yet this was never investigated until after his death.
The importance of recovering these cases demonstrates how far we still need to go in terms of how the police and prison officers treat ‘BAME’ people, in this case a South Asian individual. The way policing operates in the prison service does not aim to protect but it is a hostile place for people like Mubarek, and there needs to be structural anti-racist improvement in how the system operates. To bring about systemic change, we must continue to seek justice and hold the perpetrators accountable whilst also supporting the affected communities.
[2] Solomos, J. (2003) Race and Racism in Britain, Basingstoke: Palgrave.
[3] HM Inspectorate of Prisons (2014). Report of a review of the implementation of the Zahid Mubarek Inquiry recommendations A thematic review. London: Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons.
[4] Family wins race murder inquiry Alan Travis Home affairs editor The Guardian (1959-2003); Sep 5, 2001; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Guardian and The Observer
[5] HM Inspectorate of Prisons (2014). Report of a review of the implementation of the Zahid Mubarek Inquiry recommendations A thematic review. London: Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons, p.6.
[6] Rollock, N. (2009) The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Ten Years On, London: Runnymede Trust.
This article was initially published in the NPMP Magazine Issue 2. You can read all the articles and the full magazine here. To order your physical copy please email npolicemonitor@gmail.com.
‘There were a couple of PCSOs stationed outside the front doors of the [Owens Park] Tower from the afternoon well into the evening. Then we sat and watched as Fallowfield descended into chaos, and students were hounded back into their halls by an overzealous police force, riot vans and all. My heart completely goes out to the many students who would have found this extremely upsetting, I know if I were in your situation I would have found the whole ordeal very difficult, and a strain on my mental health. To have this happen in a University, residential setting makes it even worse. This campus should be a place for young people to safely experience everything University has to offer without fearing policemen or the security hired by the University of Manchester.’
‘I had my ID card in my hand and they tried to snatch it from me. The next thing I know I was being pinned up against the wall. There was no conversation. They just pinned me up against the wall and said I looked like a drug dealer. Why? Because I am black and wearing a hoodie?… It’s disgusting, I haven’t been able to sleep. I am traumatized by the situation. My parents came from Somalia as refugees and have given up everything for me to be at this institution. I am the first person in my family to go to university, so for me it’s an achievement – but when they hear about things like this happening, my parents are begging me to go back home… I want to be able to live in peace and enter my flat in peace and not be stopped and abused by the people we are paying to protect us.’
Following the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police and the resurgence of #BlackLivesMatter protests this summer, senior leaders at Manchester’s city-based campuses issued public declarations of sympathy and support. In a statement released on June 2nd, Professor Malcolm Press, Vice Chancellor of Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), insisted that campus leaders stood ‘shoulder to shoulder with people affected by racism and discrimination’ and encouraged students not to ‘be silent’. ‘You, your experiences and ideas matter.’ Professor Nalin Thakkar, Vice President for Social Responsibility at the University of Manchester, similarly acknowledged the ‘problem of racial inequality and discrimination’ and expressed the University’s commitment to ‘prevent systemic racism and act where we see evidence of bias.’ In a conversation with reporters for the student newspaper, The Mancunion, April McMahon, Vice President of Teaching, Learning and Students echoed this sentiment pointing to the University’s efforts to decolonise the curriculum as well as ongoing collaborations with community partners to tackle racism on and off campus. ‘The more we can hear people’s stories and experiences and try and understand them, that’s just vital for us.’
Against this backdrop, the public statements of first year French and Linguistics student Zac Adan and the unnamed student occupier of the Owens Park Tower strike a discordant note. Despite these initial expressions of commitment to anti-racism, University leaders would use the weeks and months that followed to prepare for a full return to campus against the backdrop of a global public health crisis that continues to disproportionately impact Black people and other People of Colour. Driven by economic interests, and particularly the desire to secure student tuition and rent fees, tens of thousands of students were encouraged to travel from around the world to take up residence in cramped, congregate living facilities located in close proximity to some of Manchester’s most ethnically diverse and working-class communities. Moreover, policing – the issue at the heart of the summer’s #BlackLivesMatter campaigns – would paradoxically come to serve as the key instrument in the two universities efforts to manage the inherent risks associated with the return to campus.
As had been forewarned by Independent Sage, Sage and the Universities and College Union, COVID-19 case numbers predictably surged in residence halls across the city during September. In response, campus leaders at both MMU and the University of Manchester deployed additional security forces and drew upon new legislative powers enshrined in the Coronavirus Act 2020 to tighten control over students’ lives and mobility. On September 25th, MMU in tandem with city authorities locked down the Birley and Cambridge residence halls insisting that all students should refrain from leaving their accommodations ‘including for study, part-time work or socialising, unless there is a medical emergency.’ Nearly two thousand students found themselves confined without prior notice to residence halls with access strictly controlled by a growing number of police and private security guards. When the lockdown began, Megan Tingey, a 19-year-old criminology student, had just completed her 14-day self-isolation period after receiving a positive test for COVID-19. ‘It was quite scary and confusing,’ she explained. ‘A police van turned up and there were police outside the gate, quite a lot of them just walking around looking at everyone… No one’s really told us much and then the police turn up as well with security outside – it’s a really, really difficult situation.’
Only a few miles down Oxford Road at the University of Manchester, students were arriving on campus for freshers’ week. Fearing similar outbreaks in the Fallowfield residence halls, campus leaders issued a stark public statement on September 24th:
‘We have been very clear to students that they must respect social distancing rules and all other restrictions to keep themselves and others safe. If students do not comply, they will face disciplinary action from the University, which could lead to fines or expulsion, and we will not hesitate to involve the police if necessary. Some students have already been issued with fixed penalty notices by the police. Additional security officers have been deployed in Fallowfield and further reminders sent. Details of offending students are being recorded and a number of those will now go through our disciplinary process. Active consideration is also being given to introducing a curfew across all halls. We really want to avoid this but if residents fail to adhere to social distancing rules we will be faced with no alternative.’
Within days of this announcement, COVID-19 rates were spiraling out of control in the Fallowfield halls with hundreds of students forced to self-isolate and classes quickly moved online. Over the coming weeks, the University would make good on its threat to employ disciplinary procedures and police power to control an anxious and increasingly organized student population now engaged in protests and levying a rent strike. On November 5th, students awoke to find fences erected around the residence halls with only a single exit point manned by university security guards. Students wishing to enter or exit their homes were now subject to ID checks and the swipe cards that enabled them access to other buildings were disabled. University leaders insisted that the measures had been enacted ‘to help keep our students, our staff and our community safe.’ Many students disagreed. ‘It makes us feel like they don’t trust us, it feels like they’re locking us in our rooms,’ explained George Rogers, a first-year planning and real estate student. Isabella Mearns, a first-year architecture student agreed, ‘We just feel like prisoners at the moment.’ Later that day, students assembled for a mass demonstration that culminated with the fences being torn down.
It was against this backdrop that on November 12th the unnamed student occupier (quoted at the beginning of this post) joined others from the growing UoM Rent Strike, 9k 4 What? and Students before Profit campaigns in entering the Owens Park Tower. In a public statement, the student occupier explained,
‘We have been forced to undertake this drastic action because of the University’s refusal to meet the very reasonable demands of the Rent Strike. We are also concerned about the University’s constant prioritizing of profit before students and staff. We are disappointed that it had to get to this point, but we are prepared to continue this action until the University meets our demands.’
What is apparent is that University leaders – despite their expressions of sympathy and support – were not really listening to the ‘stories and experiences’ of students in the face of overwhelming police power. It was the University’s own policies that created the context for these traumatizing experiences of overpolicing, surveillance and racial profiling.
Had the university moved beyond vacuous statements, to take seriously the lessons of this summer’s anti-racist protests, then these events would have been entirely foreseeable. In Greater Manchester, and nationally, policing disproportionately harms Black communities. These historical and enduring patterns are evident in data on stop and search, in use of force including Taser, in racial profiling through gangs databases, and at all levels of policing. These issues are apparent in the context of private security too, and specifically on university campuses where Black students are too often seen as trespassers, or ‘bodies out of place’. What’s particularly jarring is that in addition to the voices of students, there is also a strong evidence base – including from academics working at these very institutions – that highlights these issues.
With all of this in mind, we have to ask why exactly the University of Manchester need to carry out an investigation into the incident of racial profiling? The problems are plain to see, and whilst the investigation will likely see the blame fall solely on individual security staff in order to protect the university, much of the fault lies with the institution! Not only because it has put lives at risk by treating students as cash cows, but because, despite its rhetoric and high-profile hires, and despite the agitation of its students, it has failed to do the necessary work of addressing institutional racism. Through the whiteness of its curricula and its teaching staff, to the toothlessness of its approaches to ‘equality and diversity’, its inaction on the ‘awarding gap’, and its numerous close links with the police, the university has created the campus conditions that marginalise Black students. Many of these issues were highlighted in a set of demands made by Decolonise UoM back in June. Evidently foreseeing just how vacuous university statements would transpire to be, they said:
‘If the University of Manchester is truly committed to anti-racism and decolonisation, as it claims, we call on the institution to demonstrate a commitment to Black Lives Matter not just through words, but through action.’
We are now seeing the impact of the university’s inaction. However, as student protesters are showing, it will be through organising and resistance that change will come.
This year, the Northern Police Monitoring Project and Kids of Colour launched a campaign to get police out of schools. With support from the National Education Union’s North West Black Members Organizing Forum, the No Police in Schools campaign highlights how penal enforcement is creeping into education, and how this is harmful to students, particularly those from minoritised communities. The recent events on university campuses in Manchester, and elsewhere, coupled with previous campaigns for Cops off Campus, serve as a stark reminder that these are urgent issues for university students too!
